FLAVORS OF THE MONTH: August 2011

/ / Fast Food News / 2 Comments

Get your free slurpee @ 7-Eleven today

Here are some of this month’s limited time offers.

This month, Slurpee is partnering up with the WWE for this month’s featured Slurpee — Berry Citrus Slam. It’s a blend of raspberry and orange. If you’re into holding wrestling matches between collectable Slurpee cups, you’ll be happy to hear 7-Eleven will be offering exclusive cups and straws highlighing WWE superstars, like John Cena, The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and other WWE wrestlers who aren’t popular enough to star in movies. An 8-ounce serving has 65 calories, 0 grams of fat, 5 milligrams of sodium, 17 grams of carbohydrates, and 17 grams of sugar.

Baskin-Robbins’ Flavor of the Month is Picnic Punch, a watermelon and green apple sherbet that reminds you summer is almost over and the cold non-sherbet eating months are around the corner. A 4-ounce scoop has 160 calories, 2.5 grams of fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 10 milligrams of cholesterol, 45 milligrams of sodium, 34 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 33 grams of sugar, and 1 gram of protein.

Dairy Queen’s Blizzard of the Month is the Nutter Butter Blizzard which is made up of Nutter Butter cookie pieces and Nutter Butter peanut butter crème filling blended with creamy vanilla soft serve. A medium Nutter Butter Blizzard has 960 calories, 39 grams of fat, 16 grams of saturated fat, 1.5 grams of trans fat, 60 milligrams of cholesterol, 660 milligrams of sodium, 135 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 92 grams of sugar, and 20 grams of protein.

Cold Stone Creamery’s Gold Cone Flavor of the Month is Mojito Sorbet, which the Cold Stone website describes the lime-flavored treat as “a refreshing blend of mint coupled with the unique texture of a sorbet.” However, they forgot to add, “without the warmness of alcohol.” A medium serving of Mojito Sorbet has 310 calories, 3 grams of fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 5 milligrams of sodium, 74 grams of carbohydrates, 71 grams of sugar, and 0 grams of protein.

August’s $5 Featured Footlong is their Buffalo Chicken. I’m not a fan, but it appears others really like the combination of buffalo glazed chicken and ranch dressing. A six-inch Buffalo Chicken has 460 calories, 19 grams of fat, 5 grams of saturated fat, 65 milligrams of cholesterol, 1390 milligrams of sodium, 47 grams of carbohydrates, 5 grams of fiber, 9 grams of sugar, and 27 grams of protein.

NEWS: Kellogg’s March To Pop-Tartize Every Dessert Continues With Frosted Confetti Cake Pop-Tarts

/ / Spotted on Shelves

Confetti Cake Pop-Tarts on Shelf

Update: Click here to read our Limited Edition Frosted Confetti Cake Pop-Tarts review

With the release of the new Limited Edition Frosted Confetti Cake Pop-Tarts, I now realize Kellogg’s has an almost endless supply of desserts they can choose from to create new Pop-Tarts flavors that are poor representations of the actual desserts. I can imagine Custard Pie Pop-Tarts, Red Velvet Cupcake Pop-Tarts, Strawberry Cheesecake Pop-Tarts, Tiramisu Pop-Tarts, and Fruitcake Pop-Tarts.

With all of these Pop-Tarts dessert flavors, I can also imagine someone making a parody of those Yoplait Light Yogurt commercials with women bragging about how they’re eating all these desserts and losing weight, but they’re really eating Yoplait yogurt.

According to the Kellogg’s website, the Limited Edition Frosted Confetti Cake Pop-Tarts consist of “colorful confetti sprinkles on top of the white-frosted, buttery crust and inside the cake-flavored filling.”

One Frosted Confetti Cake Pop-Tart has 190 calories, 3.5 grams of fat, 1 gram of saturated fat, 1.5 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 0.5 grams of monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 230 milligrams of sodium, 36 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, 15 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein, and fortified with 8 vitamins and minerals.

Source: Kellogg’s website

REVIEW: Peanut Butter and Grape Jelly Candwich

/ / Reviews / 17 Comments

Candwich PBJ Grape

I’m extremely disappointed the Peanut Butter and Grape Jelly Candwich didn’t gross me out. I had high expectations that every bite I took of it would be a regrettable one, making me pause between bites so that my stomach could decide whether or not to allow the chewed pieces of food to go into my intestines or come back out from whence they came.

I wanted the Candwich to be a complete hermetically-sealed peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a can with a shelf life of 25 years, but instead the can contains the ingredients to build a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and it has a shelf life of one year.

One year?

Come on, America! This is the 21st century and we have preservative technology that goes way beyond the salting and pickling that our forefathers used. If Germany can create a cheeseburger in a can, then why can’t we have a complete peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a can?

What comes in a Candwich can are the four basic items you need to make a peanut butter sandwich: bread, peanut butter, jelly, and a knife. There’s also one basic item you need to include to make it appealing to children — a piece of Wonka’s Cherry Laffy Taffy. And, the can also includes one must have item if you’re going to put bread in a can and have it last for more than a year — a packet of oxygen absorbing FreshPax.

I would tell you more about FreshPax, but that would involve me reading about science, which hurts my brain. So click here if you want to learn more.

Candwich PBJ Grape Contents

As you can see in the photo above, the bread is basically a hot dog bun, albeit a little bigger than your standard hot dog bun. However, unlike a hot dog bun, the bread is not pre-cut. So thank goodness for the included plastic knife. The packets of peanut butter and jelly contain ample amounts of spreadable condiments, so much so that if there was another piece of bread in the container there would’ve been enough for two sandwiches.

However, I’m glad there wasn’t a second sandwich, because I had a slightly hard time getting through one.

Candwich PBJ Grape Innards

The bread is dense, but soft. It isn’t horrible tasting, but I have to say eating bread that lives longer than most Comedy Central shows is frickin’ weird and every bite I took of it was a hesitant one. As for the peanut butter and jelly, both are so bland that they make store brand peanut butter and jelly taste like Skippy and Smuckers. It’s not the worst peanut butter and jelly sandwich I’ve had, but it’s probably the only PB & J sandwich I’ve describe as “tolerable.”

As for the Wonka Cherry Laffy Taffy, I have to say it makes a decent Candwich chaser.

According to the packaging, Candwiches are “Great for School Lunch” and “KIDS Love Them.” I’m sure they’re great for school lunches and, mathematically, there have to be kids who love them, but I don’t think I would give my child a Candwich, if I had children. Sure, a Candwich would give children the opportunity to build their lunch, but don’t kids have enough to build nowadays, like Lego kits, iTunes playlists, dioramas, and relationships with their classmates.

Also, I don’t know if I’d trust some kids with a plastic knife. If they’re clever and stuck with a Candwich they don’t want, they could not only use the knife to cut the bread and spread the peanut butter and jelly, they could also use it to threaten a classmate to trade lunches with them.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 sandwich – 480 calories, 200 calories from fat, 22 grams of fat, 4.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 510 milligrams of sodium, 63 grams of carbohydrates, 4 grams of fiber, 18 grams of sugar, and 13 grams of protein.)

Item: Peanut Butter and Grape Jelly Candwich
Price: $10.00
Size: 4-pack
Purchased at: markonefoods.com
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: Tolerable. Packets contain enough PB & J for two sandwiches. Cherry Laffy Taffy makes a decent Candwich chaser. Comes with a knife to cut bread, spread condiments, and threaten others for their food.
Cons: Not a complete hermetically-sealed peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a can. Only one year shelf life. Eating bread that has a long shelf life is weird. Peanut butter and jelly are really bland. Bread is not pre-cut.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Thank You

/ / Announcement / 8 Comments

A few months ago I added a small item in the sidebar about supporting The Impulsive Buy through our Amazon link. Since then, I’ve noticed an increase in orders that use the TIB link. So I would like to take this time to thank everyone who has used that link to purchase stuff from Amazon to support The Impulsive Buy. I greatly appreciate it.

If you’re one of the many who read The Impulsive Buy only via our RSS feed and have never seen the sidebar, you might be wondering what the hell I’m talking about, so I’ve pasted what I wrote in the sidebar below.

If you’d like to help TIB, in an easy non-obtrusive way, shop at Amazon through TIB’s Amazon link. You’ll get to enjoy the savings at Amazon and TIB gets a little scratch to help pay for writers, webhosting, and Marvo’s addiction to breakfast cereals.

I’d also like to thank everyone else who has supported The Impulsive Buy, whether you’ve told your friends about us, added us to your blog’s sidebar, or visited us every day to read about what we’re putting into our mouths or may put into our mouths.

Thank you.

REVIEW: Kellogg’s FiberPlus Antioxidants Caramel Pecan Crunch Cereal

/ / Reviews / 4 Comments

Kellogg's FiberPlus Antioxidants Caramel Pecan Crunch

This being my second straight review involving a fiber-heavy product, a lot of you probably expect me to lay down a bunch of infantile poo jokes.  Well, shame on you for making assumptions, because they make an ass out of you and me.  I promise that will occur only insofar as ALL of my reviews eventually devolve into poo jokes.  But rest assured, I’m not going to go out of my way to drop nuggets of fecal hilarity on you.  That would seem forced, and I’d rather just relax and let things flow naturally.  Okay?



So what we have here is a product aiming to quench my unslakable appetite for cereal, keep me healthy, and keep me, er, regular.  All without making me want to carve out my taste buds with an apple corer.  No small task, but this is an entirely different fiber-based product line from the last one, so it would be unprofessional to just assume it’s going to be bad, and that’s not what we do here at The Impulsive Buy. 

What we DO do is give unbiased reviews, and that starts with visual appraisal.  So I should note that out of the box, FiberPlus Antioxidants Caramel Pecan Crunch appears kind of… meh.  It basically looks like a bowl of Total with some random lumps of randomness mixed in.  The lumps don’t look like anything in particular, just little pellets of, presumably, flavor country.  I don’t know if I expected them to look like those little squares of caramel, but they absolutely do not.  If it is theoretically possible to look like the exact literal opposite of a caramel square, that’s what they look like.  Examination of the box indicates they are, in fact, the pecans, but you probably wouldn’t guess that just by looking at them.

Kellogg's FiberPlus Antioxidants Caramel Pecan Crunch Bowl

Still, as your fourth grade teacher took pains to impress upon you, we judge others not by what they look like, but by how they taste.  And that’s where the Caramel Pecan Crunch both surprises and, if not delights, at least generally pleases, because the flavor is far more palatable and caramel-…y than expected.  Rather than a hint, they seem to have included a smattering, dare I say a dollop of caramel in each flake, and it results in a pretty flavorful cereal.  Don’t get me wrong — it’s not going to overwhelm you with the richness of the caramel, and you’re unlikely to trick yourself into thinking you’re eating pecan pie.  But since I was expecting maybe one step above cardboard if I was lucky, a fiber cereal that has a fair amount of sweetness and actually does taste like what it says on the box is a welcome relief.

There’s no question that any pecan flavor takes a definite backseat to the caramel.  Where the pecans really contribute is in terms of consistency, as even a caramel-flavored cereal runs the risk of getting boring if it’s just flakes.  The pecan lumps both break up the monotony and provide the “crunch” promised in the name.  Admit it, “Caramel Flakes” just doesn’t sound as appealing, does it?  That said, I’d still prefer that they have a more discernible taste presence.  And be warned, Kellogg’s turned down Cap’n Crunch’s generous “protection” offer, so these do get soggy in milk pretty quickly.

I’ll concede it may be benefiting from lowered expectations, but as far as I’m concerned, FiberPlus Antioxidants Caramel Pecan Crunch does all I could ask of it: it’s fairly healthy (by breakfast cereal standards), it helps with that thing we’re all thinking of but I’ve run out of jokes for, and it’s fairly tasty.  That’s a win in my book, so if you’re a caramel fan, you should definitely buy a box and see what you think.
 
(Nutrition Facts – 3/4 cup – 170 calories, 10 calories from fat, 1.5 grams of total fat, 0 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 200 milligrams of sodium, 110 milligrams of potassium, 43 grams of total carbohydrates, 9 grams of dietary fiber, 12 grams of sugars, 22 grams of other carbohydrates, and 3 grams of protein.)

Item: Kellogg’s FiberPlus Antioxidants Caramel Pecan Crunch
Price: $3.49
Size: 15.5 ounces
Purchased at: Acme
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Healthy cereals that don’t taste like crap.  Real caramel taste.  Decent aroma.  Mysterious “crunch” element helps balance out the flakes.  Flavor country.  Beats other fiber-based products like they stole something.
Cons: Total + unidentified lumps = not appealing.  Understated pecans.  Predictable poop jokes.  Become soggy quickly.  Looking like the opposite of caramel squares.

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